d of progress, some progress - the progress; 0 news - an item of news - the news, etc.semi-notional determiners used with nouns in the absence of articles, expose the essential article meanings as in-built in their semantic structure.
Thus, the status of the combination of the article with the noun should be defined as basically analytical, the article construction as such being localized by its segmental properties between the free syntactic combination of words (the upper bordering level) and the combination of a grammatical affix with a notional stem in the morphological composition of an indivisible word (the lower bordering level). The article itself is a special type of grammatical auxiliary. [41, c. 164]
The pronunciation of the articles
The pronunciation of the articles and the spelling of the indefinite article depend upon the initial sound of the following word. The indefinite article is spelled as a before consonant and as an before vowel sounds. When stressed it is pronounced respectively as [ei] or [am]. However, since the articles are usually unstressed, the pronunciation of the indefinite article is generally reduced to the neutral vowel [?] Before consonants, and to [n] before vowel sounds, which depends entirely on the pronunciation and not the spelling of the following word, as can be seen in the table below.
[?] [? n]
a dog an applehouse an hourEuropean an eagleunit an uncleyear an x-raymanuscript an MP
The definite article is pronounced as [рi:] when stressed. When unstressed, it is pronounced as [р?] Before consonants and [рi] before vowels:
[р?] [рi]
the dog the applehouse the hourEuropean the x-rayunit the unclemanuscript the MP
Since the article is the opening element of a noun phrase, it is placed before the noun it refers to or before all the other noun premodifiers. The exceptions to this rule are as follows:
a) the definite article may be preceded by the predeterminers all and
both: Are you going to cook all the cakes yourself? Both the answers were good.
b) the indefinite article may be preceded by the predeterminers what,
such, quite: What a sight I am in this hat! Were such a queen, and I was such a nothing! Are quite a scholar.) The indefinite article is placed after adjectives preceded by the adverbs too, as, so: was too difficult a problem for the child to solve. It «s as good an excuse as any for breaking it up. I »ve never seen so miserable a creature as Jane was at the moment [46, c.84].
1.4 The functions of articles
use of the the Indefinite Article
. With countable nouns, both concrete and abstract, the indefinite article is used when we want to name an object (thing, person, animal, abstract notion), to state what kind of object is meant:. G. He gave her a cigarette and lighted it.came a tap at the door, and a small elderly manthe room, wearing a cloth cap.function may be called the nominating function. It is the main function of the indefinite article with countable nouns.at the same time, owing to its origin from the numeral one, the indefinite article always implies the idea of ??oneness...
